10 Oct r 1807

Lords Delegates

after Ch. │ │ advantages

Ch. │ │ L d Hale's Plan

On the present occasion, the mention of this statute may serve more purposes than one -

1. It may serve to shew how compleat a misrepresentation may be given of a law, by a lawyer-Judge, though one of the least dishonest of lawyers, and the most reasonable of Judges, the law being an article not of imaginary but of real law: that law lying before him, and he in the cool of his closet reading it, and not, being by any fee, lured to misrepresent it.

2. At the same time that it shews how compleatly unsuitable the "method" proposed by the learned Judge is to the "method chalked out by parliament in the statute referred to, to impress the belief of its being "suitable", it shews how near the now proposed method which it is the object of those pages to recommend happens to be the method really chalked out by that antient statute.

I say happens. For though, under the erroneous conception formed of it by the reasonable Judge the argument drawn from this source is placed by him at the head of his eight reasons, having the precedence near[?] the first that gives any the slightest glance towards the principle of utility and the ends of justice, it is in those pages /in its relation to the present plan, the coincidence/ is pointed out as matter of curiosity, and nothing more. Since the passing of this statute about 330 years had elapsed, at the time when in the eyes of the venerable Judge, it presented in the form in which it had presented itself to his conception, the very best or at least second best argument he could find in favour of the plan proposed by him for /in supreme[?]/ appellate judicatory: 447 years have elapsed, the constitution in the meantime fixed, and by being fixed, changed in the interval between that same statute and the present time. Had this antiquated statute been as repugnant, as it happens to prove accordant with the plan here submitted, neither that plan not have undergone the smallest /slightest/ change, nor the author's conceptions in regard to the utility of it would have undergone the smallest changes.